Two steps more, and her hand closed firmly on the warm haft of the knife. It felt heavy in her hand, as if it weighed more than any knife should. She tried to drop it, but her fingers merely tightened their grip.
“Kill him.” She couldn’t see Winterseine now; her gaze was focused on Terran’s face, but she felt the demand and raised her knife. Hoping that Tris was near enough to hear, she called out to him silently.
Rialla? In the time it took her to kneel beside Terran, Tris was able to grasp what was happening and… Rialla felt a surge of strength.
She stumbled to her feet and took a step back from the sleeping prophet. She tossed the knife into the fire and turned to see Winterseine rush to his feet, his face a mask of rage.
“Who are you, slave girl?” Unknowingly, he paraphrased his son’s question from early that day.
She gave him a gentle smile. “I am Rialla, horse trainer of Sianim.”
11
“A horse trainer?” questioned Winterseine, smiling. “Well, who would have thought it? Leath brought a Sianim spy with him to his brother’s castle.”
“As you are contemplating the murder of your son, I don’t think you have the purity of soul to pass judgment,” commented Rialla dryly as the rain began to fall.
“Ah, my dear,” Winterseine said, shaking his head sadly as he picked up a nearby stick and used it to knock the knife out of the fire. “Familial elimination is an old Darranian art form. Spying, on the other hand, is a betrayal that is much more difficult to overlook. Ah well, with you dead, there is no way to prove Laeth’s espionage activities—and I need you dead.” As he spoke, he made a faint motion with his hand and the compulsion to pick up the knife returned.
With Tris to strengthen her, Rialla didn’t even sway. Winterseine’s lips tightened with annoyance. “When did you become a magician, slave?”
The power that Tris had poured into Rialla to let her escape Winterseine’s spell was as effective as a drug—and as dangerous. Even as she warned herself to be cautious, a smile stretched its way across her face and she heard herself answer, “As I said earlier, though perhaps you did not hear, I am not a slave. I have not been one for a very long time.”
She touched her cheek with her hand. With magic-heightened senses she could feel the scar where she’d sliced her cheek, despite Tris’s spell. Almost without thought, she strove to dismiss the magic that marked her as Winterseine’s possession.
Lightning illuminated the dark forest momentarily, followed soon after by the reverberation of its accompanying thunder.
As soon as Rialla sought his help resisting Winterseine’s spell, Tris slid off the horse. He pulled the bridle and saddle off, setting the animal free to go or stay as it would.
He knew he wasn’t going to find Rialla in time to help her directly; the bond would have to serve them. He wasn’t sure how much he could help her over such a distance, but there was green magic in the storm that had awakened in the night. Tris drew it to him ruthlessly, ignoring the rains that began to pour from the heavens.
He thought only to keep Rialla out of Winterseine’s control; he hadn’t considered the possibility that she could use the magic that he gave her. When she began to dispel his illusion, Tris stepped in delicately to guide her manipulation.
This way, he said. It doesn’t waste so much magic.
Rialla accepted his help gratefully. The kidskin fell into her hand, the shadow of the tattoo fading away, but Tris’s magic, under her control, had chosen to do more than that. Under her fingers her cheek was smooth, without scar or blemish. Her smile widened as she met Winterseine’s gaze fully.
“I’m neither slave nor magician.” She took a step closer and gripped his left hand firmly in her right. “Have you forgotten? I am an empath.”
The unexpectedness of her move kept Winterseine momentarily motionless, and then it was too late. Rialla caught him in a maelstrom of emotion.
This time there was no room full of people for her to draw upon, only Winterseine himself. She ignored her instinctive revulsion and sought the faint trails of destructive emotion that he kept hidden from himself in the far recesses of his mind. She ignored the rage that had more than a touch of insanity in it: it would merely strengthen him. She found instead all the fears that had been growing since his son had discovered that the god of night still lived.
She took his fear, strengthened it with doubt, and pulled it closer to his conscious mind…
Winterseine ripped himself free of her hold. She could see the sweat that stained his shirt in the light of the fire.
“Bitch,” he said. His left arm, the one she’d touched, hung limply at his side—a reflex only; she had done him no physical harm.
He motioned sharply with his right hand. This time the hand motion was no arcane move. She saw the flash of silver and dodged to the side.
Rialla had trained almost obsessively at Sianim, struggling to rebuild her confidence. The knife Winterseine had produced from a hidden sheath on his arm merely slipped across the skin of her upper arm before landing in the dirt behind her.
Resting her weight lightly on the balls of her feet, she flexed her knees slightly, looking for the opening that would allow her to touch him again. Not over his clothing—that would diminish the effect; she needed to touch him skin to skin.
Already the terror that she’d pulled to the surface of Winterseine’s thoughts was receding as the slave master replaced it with rage. Though she couldn’t feel his anger, she could see it in his face.
Careful, warned Tris without disturbing her concentration. He’s getting ready for something. Can you feel the magic he’s amassing?
Winterseine smiled and stretched his right hand toward her. He made a grasping motion, and Rialla felt pain explode in her chest. She fell to her knees, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come. Tris’s warmth spread slowly across her chest, and with it the ability to breathe, though the incapacitating pain remained:
Rain began to fall, pounding the ground with the force of its descent.
Winterseine had stepped closer. Rialla rolled, extending her arm; she touched his boot for an instant before he stepped away. In that moment she took the ache in her chest, and Tris’s empathetic pain, and thrust them at Winterseine. Even through the heavy leather, the contact broke his concentration and Rialla’s agony faded.
Rialla rolled to her feet, panting with the triple effect of her own pain, Winterseine’s and Tris’s. The hurt faded rapidly. Without Winterseine’s magic to interfere, Tris quickly repaired the slight damage that had been done.
“There it magic in you,” accused Winterseine. “I felt it.”
In the few naked moments she had touched Winterseine, she’d discovered the fear that haunted him. The moment had come to take advantage of it.
Rialla shook her head and then slanted a glance at Terran, ensuring that the slave master saw the adoring expression with which she regarded his son. In a soft voice she said, “No. It is in him.”
A touch of fear crept back into Winterseine’s face. “You only slept with him. He’s slept with many women.” There was defensiveness in his voice.
Rialla remembered then that Winterseine had objected to his son’s relations with an empath. She smiled slowly, to make him nervous. “They weren’t like me.”
“If you are so ensorcelled, why did you send him to sleep?”
Rialla noticed that he wasn’t paying as much attention to what she was doing, and she inched herself closer to him. She shook her head. “He is not like you. He would have objected to your death.” She amplified his fears with words instead of empathy. “He knows it is the best thing to do, but he is too honorable. It is unfortunate that you didn’t eat that stew. Your death at my hands would have been much less painful than the one that Altis has planned if I failed my task.”